An economic and political system characterized by a free market for goods and services and private control of production and consumption.

Is that okay?

If the quote above was true then we would find that the societies that is most in accordance with capitalist principles would be the societies where people are starving.

I don’t understand, what you mean. What I described, is capitalism.

I don’t understand why you call commodities and money “dead stuff”, it seems to me like a poetic trick. We all rely on “dead stuff”, like cars, food and anti-biotics.

It’s true, there is some poetry in it, I remembered John Holloway when I wrote the text. But there is a real background.

I try to avoid the term »dead labour«, which would be more correct. The point is, that we indeed rely on different things, which are not »living«, but being commodities they are »dead labour«, which is perfectly exchangeable against another incarnation of »dead labour«: money.

If the things we want are the outcome of a commonist production, they are means to satisfy our needs. They are embedded in the daily live of the people, which control the things and not the other way around as in capitalism. Thus »labour« is the disembedded social form of production in capitalism. In commonism there is no longer such thing.

What I fear is a new generation of young people who read Naomi Klein, and actually believe that free trade is evil, that the voluntary exchange of goods is evil and therefore will move to stop it.

Free trade is evil, it’s the backbone of capitalism. But why should people should stop from helping each other and giving things back and forth? Exchange in the sense of equivalent exchange is the problem we should face.

“I don’t argue that everything in a capitalist society is covered by property rights, things that exist in infinite amounts ( or can be copied to exist in infinite amounts ) like air and linux-distros are clearly not covered.”

I think, that it is not only about things that exist in infinite amounts (not even clean air exists in infinite amounts), it’s about water, soil and genetic resources inscribed into biological resources too (genes can be copied but not necessarily the plants or forests which harbour those genes). So, it is more tricky.

” However if somebody has mixed his labour in with a vacant strip of land, and produced e.g. wheat, you would be hard pressed to argue that the wheat doesn’t belong to that person. He owns his body, so it would be fair to assume that he owns the actions of his body, the wealth it produces.”

The commons idea is precisely not about “vacant resources”, it is not about no men’s land, but about common possession of resources we all need to live, to produce and to be creative.
What you are talking about is exactly the John Lockean idea of property, which ended up in all teaching books all over the world, thus, I would challenge those ideas:
Let’s take petrol for instance: Someone mixes petrol with his labor, research, investment and so on, and – ok- by doing so he is entitled to appropriate the value of the product (a barrel) as far as his labor, research and investment is concerned. But IMHO, this doesn’t authorize him to appropriate the mere value of petrol itself. These are two very different things. (in a certain way recognized by John Locke when he formulated his two basic conditions)

Obviouly the problem is more complicated than described, since those who explore, use or approriate a certain common resource not only appropriate the sheer resource but normally they destroy others (in the case of petrol f.i. whole landscapes, aquifers, climate stability), and they never pay back to society for the destroyed values,
hope you get my point.
So, in some cases this can be resolved by taxes, but only a very few countries (if any) manage to do so. Normally the gains of commons resource appropriation gets privatized and the loss of commons resource value gets socialized.

I did not get your “commonist car example” well; but for me, the decisive point in that discussion is not WHO owns? (even though, it’s a very important question). For me the very point is: what is the owner doing with the thing he owns with respect to others and with respect to our common resources? For example what do we gain, all together, if every proprietary owner of his car or even tens of millions of owners of “commonist cars” (I guess that’s what you mean) continue driving at 8 liters/100 km? Nothing. We will still destroy the planet.

So, it’s not again all kind of individual rights. It’s about how to use what and what for and how to democratize usage rights, based on the very idea of the morally same possession rights of every citizen on the resources provided by the earth or by former generations.

corporatism:
yes, there is a lot of corporatism in Mexico, less in El Salvador… but, there is no governmental control in huge parts of social life at all and still a kind of “informal expropriation”. I refer to the “normal enclosure of the commons” process driven by capitalist accumulation logic – everywhere.(f.i. They turn half of the salvadoranian territory upside down just because gold prices raised, so they will destroy livelyhoods for this and future generations. And never pay back.)

The basis for this appropriation is not theft, but coercion – most of the people HAVE to sell their labor power to those with capital (otherwise they starve). Those with capital have not, and that’s the beginning of their different roles in society, which are reproduced because capitalism strengthens these differences. Please note that this coercion does not count as force, though it’s much stronger than some kinds of coercion which are illegal. This means that also our laws and what we think as “just” and “unjust” is influenced by our economic system. In fact, it underlies our whole society and our thinking is influenced by it.

Therefore, if one wants to get an objective view, one has to take other positions in account. You can’t simply declare every concept of possession as the same as capitalist property – because if you do that, you necessarily come always to the same conclusions. There is a world of difference between possession and property – as you see in the examples mentioned, in which both concepts clash.

That brings me to the answer to your question: If you deal with people doing capitalism, they will of course have to accept being evicted. In a commons-based society, however, if it works well, there probably won’t be many people left interested in doing capitalism with you. That was my whole point, from the beginning. If you get some people (via negotiations) to do capitalism with you, surely no one will impede you – that’s against the spirit of a free society. Also, no one would have an interest.

I have to stop here, sorry. – If you’re interested in the theory of a commons-based society, try this book, it’s really good: http://peerconomy.org/wiki/Main_Page

However if a group of commonists wants to make my car commonist without my consent, that’s obviously a violent act against me.

take not make

There is no such thing as “possession property”.

I used the terms contract property and possession property to distinguish between two types of ownership. The squatters don’t respect the property rights of the original owner, however they demand their own property rights to be respected if the original owner decides to evict them and build a supermarket. The original owner argues that he owns the building due to a contract or a proof of homesteading, the squatters argue they own the building due to their possesion, they claim it to be their possession property.

So, commons are based on possession (i.e. certain rights for all of us to access, use and benefit from common goods (water, forest, biotic ressources, knowledge, algorithms and so on and so forth). Those are things, which moraly belong to all of us

I don’t argue that everything in a capitalist society is covered by property rights, things that exist in infinite amounts ( or can be copied to exist in infinite amounts ) like air and linux-distros are clearly not covered. However if somebody has mixed his labour in with a vacant strip of land, and produced e.g. wheat, you would be hard pressed to argue that the wheat doesn’t belong to that person. He owns his body, so it would be fair to assume that he owns the actions of his body, the wealth it produces.

But -and that’s the point, in many cases those things have precisely been “stolen” from us (There is no such thing as respect for the commons in a capitalist society), and they have been commodified.

OK, let’s say we have a commonist car, we split the cost so the car “belongs to all of us”. A finite resource cannot be fully owned by more than one person, although a group can share ownership in the car – so we’d have make a schedule for who uses the car at what point in time. This is totally capitalism, if somebody wants to steal this commonist car that would be against capitalist principles, namely the respect for property rights. However if a group of commonists wants to make my car commonist without my consent, that’s obviously a violent act against me.

This is one (just one, not the only) reason for starvation in many countries. El Salavador and Mexico, where I’ve been living for quiet a while are capitalist societies.

Whatever you want to call the unruly mix of economic freedom and government control that makes up the political and economic systems in Mexico and El Salvador it’s not capitalism. If some indian land in Mexico has been expropriated by a corporation in cahoots with the government, that’s not even close to being capitalism, it’s corporatism.

They used the concept of “possession”: seeing that no one used the buildings, they began to use them (took possession of them). They were often evicted later. This will NOT be possible in an possession-based society. – Use it or lose it!

Is that an example of “people simply leaving” the capitalist corner, or is it an example of commonists imposing their will on capitalists?

@Silke You raise some valid points, I’ll try to adress them tomorrow.